Jeff

Wufnik – here is the exact breakdown of the build sites for the Boeing 787. I don’t think they trust France!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/boeing/787/partsengineering.html

and as to getting these parts to Everett for final build – it’s a hideous plane named the Dreamlifter. Several times a week it crosses my backyard. It sounds like a freight train. Before it was painted in Boeing house colors it looked like an enormous bloated airborne green pea.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/boeing/787/cargoplane.html

I’m of the opinion that a nation should strive towards food self-sufficiency, but that doesn’t mean that it should only feed itself or cut off trade. I think that it’s rather dangerous to rely on international markets to feed a nation.

Wufnik, unless you’re expecting another major pan-European war, ensuring self-sufficiency wouldn’t be necessary even if it were possible (which I don’t believe it is). More than that, sometimes I believe that the only reason a lot of trade disagreements don’t devolve into full-out wars is because of our mutual need one for another. Call it the pacifying effect of mutual dependency. And that is a good thing.

The only reason Boeing makes tail assemblies in Australia is to get Qantas to buy Boeing jets. And that’s why Mitsubishi has a place on Boeing platforms as well. Not much of military use is made in either place–it’s purely commercial. Do you know what a pain it is to ship a tail assembly from Australia to Seattle?

In general, I agree with the main points here–certainly we will eventually pay for not letting more banks go under the past two years. But I think there’s one major exception–agriculture. Check out what happened to the UK during the first and second world wars. Then try to argue that the free market would have solved those problems. There is a strong case to be made for agricultural self-sufficiency. The mess that British agriculture is in, for example, is the direct result of trying to give up traditional agriculture and compete on global markets. Food is (and should be) different. The fact that blights occur is not an argument against self-sufficiency–it’s an argument for greater levels of local diversity and higher storage levels.

Protection just isn’t possible, even if it made economic sense (which it doesn’t).

Personally, I think the military security value of tanks is being replaced by other technologies that don’t necessarily require a strong domestic manufacturing base for tank construction in the event of a “conventional” WWIII breaking out. High technology is probably more important, but that’s from a decidedly non-expert position.

I have no problem with your answer to question #2, though. Regulating the means would totally be something I support. Of course, as a practical matter, figuring out what all the damn subsidies are for oil, coal, and natural gas would be a serious challenge. But there’s very little doubt in my mind that renewable sources would compete a whole lot better with fossil fuels if the hidden subsidies were eliminated, carbon tax or not.

What? And how? Food security? Social security? Military security? Except the bailouts went to banks and cars, both global industries. Food security is also a misnomer since, if you insist on being entirely self-reliant and cut off ties with other nations, you leave yourself terribly exposed to some local crop blight (or flood, or fire, or…).

>Do governments have a role to play in transitioning an economy from a (theoretically) unsustainable footing to a more sustainable footing?

Yes, of course they do. But that won’t happen if they keep bailing out the incumbents to keep doing what they were doing before.

A question that the ex-head of Intel – Andy Grove – asked when discussing the credit crisis was this, “Did you hear about the major bailout plan from the government to support the mainframe industry?” You didn’t because it never happened, but – if it had – how do you think the PC industry would be doing?

As far as sustainable vs unsustainable; it was only a few months ago that governments were actively promoting biofuels as a substitute for oil. Now we know that this has a greater environmental and social cost that does oil. But governments were pressurised to pick biofuels as a substitute and provide subsidies to promote it. They picked a winner.

There are ways and ways of promoting a transition. The first step would be to cut the ostensible subsidy that oil and coal receive via tax breaks. Then, charge them for the carbon they emit (without backhanded subsidies to make up for the inconvenience). But don’t choose an alternative energy provider lest you create a new problem.

In other words, regulate the means, not the ends.

When a government feels duty-bound to protect a particular industry from harm, that will become a financial bailout to particular companies. Then, with a history of public protection behind them, it becomes ever-harder to say no to future bailouts.

“Capitalism is Crisis” said a particularly astute sign at the Climate Camp protesting outside London a few days ago. When it works, yes, but when it becomes an incestuous mix of government and corporate interests, then it isn’t.

The great power of capitalism is its ability to dump bad ideas and reallocate those resources to those best able to use them (creative destruction). But that power is easily trumped by governments and corporations working together to protect their own influence.

In other words, if people genuinely want to ensure that corporations aren’t rewarded for failure, they have to stop demanding of their governments that they seek to protect workers from the harm of crisis in capitalism. Otherwise, all of this will just happen again.

I won’t even visit Europe on vacation, not until they wise up and starting thanking us – every day – for saving them in WWII. Besides, i don’t want get no commie cooties and i hear that they throw their trash right onto the sidewalk from second story windows.

(sorry couldn’t help the snark) Whythawk, would you be getting at the corporatism that masquerades as capitalism? Using your thesis of “picking winners” i ran through a quick list in my head; it seems that here it isn’t even so much picking winners in certain sectors but that the winners are specific corporations. Not in every case, of course, but in many of them.